“Herb didn't call today. Saturday night he was put in jail; and all through Sunday, too, for being disorderly on the street car and drunk.”
My mom's boyfriend, Herb, had crashed through the window of a Chicago Surface Lines (later CTA) streetcar back on Nov. 17, and had now paid the price with some jail time. As Dot's sister described it a few years ago:
“I can still see Herb, standing on the back of the streetcar (they were open-air in the back), with the conductor facing him and saying to Herb, ‘Haven't I seen you before?”
How Herb crashed through the window without hurting or cutting himself, I'll never know.
And the topper was the shopping bag breaking open— with all of us scrambling off of the streetcar at one time, after Herb had done his ‘thing’.
We then had to walk home from 63rd & Halsted, and I remember Herb saying, over and over, about ‘Potato salad all over the street!‘, and then he'd laugh his head off.”
I'll bet that for years afterwards, my mother and Sis couldn't help looking at each other and laughing out loud whenever they saw a streetcar go by. Then one of them would say ‘Potato salad all over the street!’ and they'd laugh all over again.
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